


Silence, and Other Too-Loud Things

by natashawrites



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst - Troubled Past, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Getting to Know Each Other, Keith: Self-Destructive Boi, Klance Oneshot AU, Klance origin story, Lance: Mother Hen, M/M, Strangers to Lovers (Implied), hiking and storms don't mix well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 15:31:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15776931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natashawrites/pseuds/natashawrites
Summary: The hiker is saying something, Keith realizes, but he can’t hear what over the sound of rolling thunder, right over their heads now. He focuses on lips, lips with a cupid’s bow dripping rain, lips that look moisturized and soft and that are still talking to him -“Are you even listening to me?” The hiker’s voice finally breaks through the storm both in and out of Keith’s head.Keith shakes his head, trying to clear the familiar fog there, trying to focus on the man in front of him, so unexpected and yet probably well-meaning. “I can hear you now.”((Or, a fic in which Lance saves Keith in more ways than one.))





	Silence, and Other Too-Loud Things

**Author's Note:**

> I'm addicted to Klance oneshots.

 

_"Sometimes it's all we can do to hold on to each other and hope the other person doesn't let go."_

 

......

 

People say forests are silent. They’re wrong. Forests teem with life, with buzzing and the soft shush of leaves against wind and the quiet creep of living things wrestling with decay. That’s not silence. Which is why, when a forest really does go silent, the quiet is like a red flare against the night sky, saying, _Get out._

Keith learns this about forests slowly at first, and then all at once. The same way he’s learned about many of the things in his life. He learns the forest is a lot like the desert, despite their many contradictions. He learns the forest is a lot like himself, in the ways that matter.

But Keith doesn’t really start to learn this about the forest until he moves to Oregon, and finds the winding trails are something that soothes the jagged edges that sometimes push against the walls of his throat late at night. Finds that the silence and not-quite-lack of it really can coexist, and what that might mean for the thoughts rattling like loose marbles inside his own head, incessantly pounding a rhythm he got sick of a long time ago.

The forest is where he meets Lance.

 

He’s hiking a familiar trail, one that overlooks the sea, one where you can feel the wind ripping against the leaves, can feel the promise of rain soaking into your skin. This trail is one that oversees rocky cliffs and drop-offs, and the wildness in it sings to something in Keith’s blood. This trail is one of the few he has allowed to grow familiar. So really, when he sees the swollen rain clouds above him through the gaps between leaves, he isn’t surprised. The rain has become a friend since he moved here.

And maybe it’s a bad decision, but when Keith hears the first crack of thunder roll across the waves and deep into the soil beneath his boots, he doesn’t start to head back to his car. Instead, he stays on the bluff, staring out at the wide open sky, mind curiously blank as darkness steals over the horizon, punctuated by brief flashes of light.

They didn’t get many storms in the desert. The desert was all whistling wind, rocks and sand and grit blowing in your eyes, blue skies that sometimes paled to an indifferent, paper-thin white. That was how the desert expressed its displeasure, and that was how Keith learned to read rolling hills of red soil and stone like the back of his hand, navigating that discontent.

When it did rain in the desert, when it really rained, the deluge turned into flash floods that felt like they could fill Keith’s entire soul with the sheer savagery of letting loose. Even on those days, Keith couldn’t be afraid of the desert, couldn’t flinch away from the clear danger there. If anything, they just made him a little afraid of himself. Yet he still found himself looking up at the sky and wishing he could tell the sands and age-old dirt and wide sky, _We’re not so different_.

Those days in the desert are why he can’t bring himself to look away from the impending storm, even when the forest goes silent behind him. That is the unnerving part. Not the crackling bolts of electricity racing down to meet the waves far below. Not the anvil-shaped clouds towering thousands of feet tall, like giants intent on crushing worlds. Not the frenzied sea, whipped into a rage by the howling wind. The most unnerving part is the complete and unadulterated silence of something that should not be silent.

Keith sneaks a look behind him at the forest, at the leaves emerald-green with the height of the summer heat, at the branches that are snapping and whipping against each other and making _noise_ but can’t quite escape the layer of absence beneath the sound, can’t quite escape the chill of knowing every animal down to the most insignificant insect has found a safe place to hide. Keith suppresses a shudder and returns his attention to the burgeoning storm, which is suddenly much closer, moving faster than it has a right to.

And Keith can’t dredge up any single grain of fear for his own safety as he perches on the bluff and lets the rain soak him.

The rain turns the sky hazy with how hard it is pouring, in sheets and sheets that obscure the very air in front of him. Keith holds up a hand and examines it detachedly, holding it in front of his face, noting the numbness beginning to grow in his fingertips. He is cold, he realizes distantly. But he can’t bring himself to care. Something about the storm, about the way it matches the rage constantly shifting under the icy sheet of calm at Keith’s surface, keeps him from caring.

It hurts. Keith welcomes it.

If only just to feel something, for once.

He can’t remember how long he’s been this way. He thinks it started when his father died. That’s when this sudden, ringing hollowness had carved out a place in Keith’s chest, said, _You’re mine now_ , and he had been helpless to fight against it. That’s when charting stars and mapping out the rough desert landscape had stopped feeling good. That’s when Keith had started to feel alone, even with the desert for company.

That loneliness was a talisman Keith had clutched close to himself ever since, a buoy that he could cling to in the dark hours of the night. It was the knife that he cut his hands on and couldn’t bear to let go of.

He is so entrenched in the storm that he doesn’t hear the other hiker’s approach until he’s right behind him. And then a hand is on his shoulder, shaking him, and he is whipping around, startled for a moment out of his caved-in thoughts and the violent purple underbelly of the clouds.

The hiker in front of him is drenched.

He is drenched, and thoroughly, extremely beautiful. The realization nearly makes Keith stagger under the weight of something unexpected, the weight of being faced with a person who isn’t teachers with pursed lips or well-meaning foster parents with drawn faces or indifferent strangers filling the sidewalks.

The hiker is saying something, he realizes, but he can’t hear what over the sound of rolling thunder, right over their heads now. He focuses on lips, lips with a cupid’s bow dripping moisture, lips that look moisturized and soft and that are still talking to him -

“Are you even listening to me?” The hiker’s voice finally breaks through the storm both in and out of Keith’s head.

Keith shakes his head, trying to clear the familiar fog there, trying to focus on the man in front of him, so unexpected yet probably well-meaning. “I can hear you now.”

His words sound quiet, even to his ears, his throat raspy with disuse and some lingering emotion he can’t name from watching the storm. It’s been a while since he talked to someone who wasn’t working at the local coffee shop or bringing the five hundredth box of takeout to his apartment.

“Ooookay, then,” the hiker says, fixing a stare on Keith that might be disapproving or might be confused. He can’t really distinguish between the two. He got so many of both from the rotating cart of adults in his childhood that they seem the same now. That expression just says, _You’re just another problem for me to deal with. Now let’s go before we waste any more time trying to figure you out._

But then the hiker says, “I’ll repeat, if you didn’t hear. You are going to catch your death out here from the cold if you don’t die of a lightning strike first. And I am not going to be the bystander who the police report cites, saying, ‘This guy could have helped but he went back to his warm car instead, what an asshole.’ So you’re coming with me and you’re getting away from this cliff.”

And Keith is so senseless, so caught off guard, unsure what to say, that he opens his mouth, closes it, and simply nods. He doesn’t know how else to react. He can’t remember the last time someone really expressed concern for his well-being like this, even if it is a complete stranger talking about police reports and warm cars.

The man grabs Keith’s wrist, hissing, “God, you’re freezing, come on,” and pulls Keith towards the forest. And Keith lets him. If only because he can’t think of what else to do.

He doesn’t look back at the storm breaking over the cliffs.

The forest is still quiet, quieter than forests and deserts and Keith should be, but this time, on the way back, the other hiker fills it with noise. He says his name is Lance.

The name trips around on loop in Keith’s brain, and he thinks distractedly that it fits this man in front of him, whose touch still seems burned into the skin of Keith’s wrist, although he long withdrew his hand. He listens with one ear to Lance’s chatter, which he thinks is probably to distract them both from the slippery mud beneath their boots and the driving rain and the unseasonably cold that seems so typical of Oregon.

Lance tells Keith that he moved to Oregon for college, for a change, for a chance to find himself. Lance tells Keith that he has a huge family that he loves, he really does, but he just wants to get some time for himself, you know? (Keith doesn’t know. Keith has had far too much time to himself lately.) Lance tells Keith that he loves hiking and only realized the storm was on its way when he got to the end of the trail by the cliffs and saw a lone dark figure silhouetted against the rain and decided to magnanimously assist the poor soul who underestimated Zeus’ wrath.

Keith is quiet, only supplying his name when Lance asks and lets Lance talk. It fills the space between them, and the empty trail winding back to the parking lot, and the blankness in Keith’s head. They pick their way across roots sticking up on the path like traitorous swells begging to be tripped over. They pass between patches of poison ivy and age-old trees that seem to be watching in silent judgment. They walk together, side-by-side, mostly sheltered from the rain by the canopies above, and Keith feels a little warmer with each step.

“So,” Lance clears his throat, finally stopping the stream of one-sided conversation. He seems vaguely uncomfortable. “I’ve, um, been talking a lot. Sorry, I just realized.”

He looks expectantly at Keith, almost like he’s expecting a blow or an admonishment. Like he’s expecting Keith to agree with him. Something inside Keith resonates at that, like Lance pressed a tuning fork to his sternum, and he finds himself speaking. “No, no. I’m just quiet. I don’t mind, really.” He offers a soft smile, one that feels strange on his lips, one that he hasn’t given in longer than he cares to remember. Lance looks doubtful, like he doesn’t believe Keith, and Keith feels a tug in him to erase that look. “I like listening to other people talk. I think it’s interesting to learn about other people. I haven’t really done that in a while.”

Lance looks mollified now, though he throws Keith a strange look. “Haven’t done what in a while? Like, learned something about someone?”

Keith clears his throat, hoping that if the trees were sentient, they wouldn’t be able to sense his self-consciousness. “Um, no. I mean, like, talked to people. Had a conversation. Haven’t done that in a while.”

Lance looks a little incredulous at that, and suddenly Keith regrets saying anything. He wouldn’t expect someone like Lance to understand. But then Lance says, “Do you want to talk?” At Keith’s raised eyebrows, he rushes to continue. “I mean, I know you just said you like listening to people, but I think everyone needs to talk about things sometimes. Just about life, troubles, you know. It’s cathartic.”

Keith exhales in a rush of breath, feeling a little winded. It’s been so long. It’s almost painful, really, to think about how long it’s been since he had such basic human interaction. He hadn’t realized how much he missed it. And before he knows it, he’s meeting Lance’s eyes. They’re wide-open, trusting, earnest.

So Keith tells his story.

And maybe it’s because Lance is just a stranger, someone random who cared enough to help out a fellow human being. Maybe it’s because the guy was so forthcoming with his own life details. Maybe it’s because Keith has felt simultaneously empty and full to bursting for far too long to be considered anything but a masochist. But something about the situation has him wanting to spill his secrets in a tangled heap in another person’s lap and say, _Here. Tell me what you make of this_. He wants to tell someone else everything. The whole truth. And maybe, just maybe, they won’t leave him this time.

He knows it’s not realistic. He knows Lance is just another stranger, and that when they reach their cars, they’ll part ways, say goodbye, never see each other again. But maybe that’s why it feels even more important.

So Keith tells Lance everything. The mother who left before he could walk. The red sand slipping through his fingers like time through an hourglass, ticking down to a future he never thought would be the way it was. The father whose gravestone cast a longer shadow across Keith’s life than the shadow of the moon on the earth during a solar eclipse. The classes he failed out of spite. The classes he aced out of spite. The nameless faces of foster parents and social workers and teachers and counselors that all, in the end, failed in getting through to him. The long road stretching in front of him as he packed everything he owned into a tiny, shitty car when he turned eighteen and the cross-country road trip that spanned a year. The move to Oregon and the discovery of forests made for hiking.

And for as much as Lance had talked earlier, for as much as he seemed to enjoy filling the storm-heavy air with sound, he listens. He nods thoughtfully when Keith pauses, is sympathetic at the sad parts Keith tries not to linger over, makes humming noises when he agrees with something. In short, he is the archetype of the perfect listener, and he is quiet the whole time Keith speaks.

When he finally halts the story with his discovery of hiking, Keith’s voice is even raspier than before. He really can’t remember the last time he’d spoken so much. And, strangely, it feels good. He hadn’t thought it would feel good, but it does, like a release. Like he had been holding his breath and hadn’t even realized it. What was the word Lance had used? Cathartic.

Lance is quiet for another long moment after Keith is done. “Thank you for telling me all that.”

The simple statement catches Keith off guard again, like so much of Lance seems to. “Why are you thanking me?”

Lance is quiet, contemplative. When he looks at Keith, there’s a soft tilt to that expressive mouth. “Because I know what it’s like to have a story you don’t tell anyone. And I know what it means to tell someone all of that, and be a little afraid of some rejection at the end.”

Keith’s breath catches in his throat.

But then, Lance offers him a crooked grin, and says, “So thank you, Keith Kogane. For your story, which I shall treasure always. And for letting me pull you away from that cliff.” And strangely, Keith doesn’t feel like he was joking. So he offers a grin of his own. It falters at first, and it’s a little shaky, but it’s a grin nonetheless.

If Keith didn’t know better, he would say Lance looks delighted at making Keith smile.

They walk the last stretch of trail in companionable silence, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Lance tells Keith about more of his own story, one of insecurity and over-extending and trying to figure out where he fits in a world that doesn't seem to want him. Keith doesn’t say this, but he thinks maybe he and Lance are more similar than they both thought. Keith finds himself talking more, telling Lance about his freelance mechanic business, about working with his hands to get out of his head. About his shop underneath his apartment. Lance says he wants to see the shop someday, and a tiny flare of heat settles in Keith’s chest at that. A flare that feels a lot like hope, and a little like salvation.

He’s almost sad when they get to the parking lot.

The storm is still raging, huge puddles wallowing in the dips of the asphalt, and Keith remembers with a sudden shock that he is very cold. His wet clothes cling to him, his boots are soaked, and he is shivering violently, the chill already soaked into his very bones. Lance, of course, notices immediately. Because that just seems to be what Lance is good at - reading other people.

Lance doesn’t let Keith go to his own car.

Instead, they go over to Lance’s and Lance is rifling through a chaotically-ordered trunk and pulling out a blanket that looks worn but soft, and he’s unlocking the car doors and they’re both sliding into the back seat and Lance is wrapping the blanket around his shoulders. And yes, the blanket is just as warm as it seemed, but warmer still are Lance’s hands on Keith’s shoulders.

Lance doesn’t remove his hands, and they stare into each other, Caribbean-blue eyes meeting stormy violet ones, and they’re leaning in for warmth and suddenly they’re kissing.

They’re kissing, and it takes Keith by such surprise that he stiffens at the sudden touch. Lance’s lips are warm, but then he’s pulling back -

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that, I know you’re probably not -” Lance stammers, worried, pushing away from Keith, and Keith makes a noise in the back of his throat because - no.

And then he’s placing his own chilly fingers on Lance’s cheeks and pulling his head close and they’re kissing again, Lance’s words cutting off as they collide.

Keith thinks maybe it’s the most perfect thing he’s ever experienced.

Their lips slide together in an unhurried rhythm. It’s like their bodies instinctively know what to do, even if they only met each other an hour or two ago, even if they’re strangers. And yet.

They’re already so much more. Lance knows every dark crevasse of Keith’s past, already. After such a short amount of time. Or at least enough to fill in the rest of the details. Keith knows about the sunshine and shadows in Lance’s own childhood, about the life he’s chasing now. They know enough about each other to know what it means, to find another person in the vast, uncertain, shadowy sea that surrounds most people. They know enough about each other to know that even if they do have to part ways, at least they can have this moment to hold onto.

The rain pounds on the roof of Lance’s car, but it almost seems drowned out by the quiet gasps of their breath, by the slide of the blanket against Keith’s shoulders, by the soft brush of fingertips on skin.

Lance touches Keith like he is glass, and for the first time, it doesn’t make him feel fragile. It makes him feel like he is something precious, something worth not shattering. And as they push against each other insistently, noses brushing and breathing in the same air, Keith is already half in love with him.

After what seems like an eternity or maybe a second or some time transcending both, Keith pulls away from Lance. “You’re cold, too,” he murmurs, tracing a hand over Lance's neck, where his hair is still plastered to his skin with rain.

Lance shivers a little, almost involuntarily, at the same time as he says, “No, I’m not, don’t worry about it.”

Keith just raises an eyebrow and Lance seems to deflate. Until Keith raises the blanket’s edge from his left shoulder, and drapes it around Lance, pulling it back toward him so they’re both cocooned in the blanket that was large enough for two all along. “Better?” Keith asks.

Lance hums. “Better.” His eyes search Keith’s, like they’re trying to solve a mystery and the answer is hidden right there, in the dark of Keith’s pupils. Keith just stares back at him, not wanting to break the quiet spell inside the car. The pocket of silence in the storm. The kind of silence that is not dangerous, but a balm for the soul.

They sit like that for the rest of the storm, occasionally losing themselves in each other’s lips and scents, sharing each other’s body heat under a blanket clearly from Lance’s childhood. Eventually, the rain tapers off, settling into a low drizzle. The sky doesn’t seem to be getting any lighter, and with a start, Keith realizes that it’s gotten late.

And although the words cost him, although they feel like a low ache settling in his joints, he says, “I should probably get going.”

Maybe he’s imagining it, but he thinks Lance looks equally as disappointed. At the thought of losing this quiet peace. “Yeah. I probably should too.”

Keith extricates himself from the blanket, almost whining at the loss of warmth, and opens the car door. The rain has brought in a rolling fog characteristic of the northwestern coast, and he can only dimly make out his car on the other side of the lot. He gingerly steps out of the car, his bones aching from the movement after sitting in the same position for so long.

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands when they hang at his sides like this, when just moments ago his hands were tangled in Lance. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, to be honest. He hesitates when he reaches his car, and looks back to Lance’s car, hoping to see something that wouldn’t be there. The fog conceals everything, and Keith swallows back disappointment, can feel that emptiness starting to seep back in -

“Keith!” A figure is running towards him in the fog, and then Lance is crashing into him, his hands on Keith’s cheeks and his lips on Keith’s one more time, a clash that is sudden and unexpected but sends thrills up Keith’s spine. They break apart, breathless, forehead to forehead, and Keith can’t help the smile that spreads across his face.

“I promise I didn’t come over to kiss you,” Lance says, panting slightly.

Keith cocks an eyebrow. Teasing. Lance makes him want to tease, makes him want to smile and laugh and feel things. “I wouldn’t have minded if you did,” he says, keeping his voice mild.

Lance huffs out something that might be a laugh, but he's pressing a piece of paper into Keith’s hand. “I’m living in Portland, like you. Call me, okay? I have to make sure you’re not doing something stupid again, like waiting to get struck by lightning. Which, by the way, you owe me dinner for.”

Lance’s eyes are twinkling, and Keith can’t help but gape a little. “Are you - are you asking me out?”

Lance just gives a fond smile that seems to say, _I already know everything you’re thinking. And yes, I am, so just accept that someone wants to spend time with you_. He winks, and says again, “Call me.”

Keith looks down at the paper, where a string of numbers is scrawled hastily across the blank expanse in what is clearly Lance’s handwriting. Then he looks up at Lance and says, “I will.”

And with that promise hanging in the air between them like a drop of dew on spider silk, Lance leans forward to press a kiss to Keith’s lips one last time before he’s gone, vanished into the fog. Keith can hear the rumble of his car’s engine, and then the headlights are gone, too, down the road back to Portland from the coast.

Keith thinks wildly, for a moment, that he imagined the entire experience. But that little slip of paper in his hand says otherwise. And with it clutched tightly between his white knuckles, Keith doesn’t let go of it the whole ride home.

And even though his car is silent beyond his own steady breathing, he knows the forest behind him is coming back to life after the storm. And maybe, he thinks, just maybe, so is he.


End file.
